Murder City_ Ciudad Juarez and the Global Economy's New Killing Fields - Charles Bowden [94]
They take four people out of the sala and execute them on the ground in the patio. The director of the center jumps atop a pregnant woman—the wife of one of the visiting evangelicals—to protect her. He dies, she is wounded but lives. Some people flee to the tiny bathroom in the back of the room and pile up atop each other. Others flee to the roof, tear out a cyclone fence, and jump. The secretary is pursued down a narrow passageway, round the corner, and to the top of the stairs, where he is mowed down. When the fifteen minutes are up, there are eight dead and five wounded, among them the secretary. When the shooting begins, neighbors go out and alert the army detail parked just outside, but the soldiers ignore them. Some neighbors call the Emergency Response Center. But there is no response. Except for that barrage of bullets. The army detail leaves once the shooting starts—though the military later denies that they were present. The killers stroll out and drive away. And then comes the silence. The police do not come for a long spell, and even then, they simply cordon off the area, but do not offer any relief to the wounded. Ambulances do not come. No one comes. Finally, the survivors load up the wounded in old vans and drive them to hospitals. One boy dies en route.
Forty-one hours later, the street is midday sun and dust. Broken buses line one side, where men tinker to get them ready for one more bumping journey down the rutted lanes of the city. I am here against my will. I had decided that six months of killing was enough for me and everyone else, and that anything beyond that merely meant repeating what was already known. I had determined I could not look at one more corpse, that I was ill, and that the toxic elements floating through my cells and through my mind came from this city and this slaughter. I had determined to leave and stay away and never return, eat wholesome food, drink bottled water, fill bird feeders religiously, and keep the slightest tremor of stress at bay and barred from my life. But people slaughtered while praying bring me back.
The street is broken earth, rock, and ruts. On one side is a row of vans from Sonora, the drivers sitting with stone faces and anxious eyes. On the other side, the buses. The drug rehab center itself is muted, its name whitewashed out since the killings. Dogs bark and snarl from behind iron gates of the houses lining the street. Trees struggle, leaves limp in the summer heat. A few blocks away, the cement plant towers over the barrio. It is thought that the people who jumped from the roof were fleeing toward the cement plant. Just down the road is the prison. And the military base for the city. On the walls everywhere, spray paint spells out “LOCOS 23,” the local gang. Everything here is coated with fatigue, all the faces, the machines, the tiny houses, the plants, everything. The sky itself sags with fatigue, and the sun seems to struggle not to fall to earth.
From here each day, the addicts would spill out into the city selling candy and gum to earn their keep in rehab. Mexico is not a good place to need help. The average wait for entry into a rehab facility for substance abuse is ten years. Other problems mean even longer delays in treatment—people with anxiety disorders wait in line thirty years before their first treatment. What this means is that treatment for most Mexicans means absolutely nothing at all. The government has programs, the government makes pronouncements, the government produces studies, but if you are a Mexican with a problem, you must take care of it yourself because no one else is going to help you. Or you find this strange treatment center where they give you a bunk bed in